"You Can’t Monetize Burnout": The Rise, Fall & Rise Again Of Britain's Biggest YouTuber

0:00Welcome to The Room Where It Happened, exploring the defining decisions of the brightest minds in business, and the lessons hidden behind them that you won't hear anywhere else. Today, Jim Chapman. Jim was one of the original YouTubers, a digital pioneer who turned vlogs into millions of views, moments into marketing goals. But behind the subscribers, the brand deals, the picture-perfect posts, there was the real story, a story of burnout, of reinvention, of survival, and as he's about to tell you, of suicidal thoughts. In this episode, we step into the creator economy, we unpack the fame machine, we discuss personal brands, how you can build something in a world moving faster than ever before and why when fatherhood came it also brought everything crashing down around Jim.

0:42As he now embarks on a period of rebuilding he opens up to us and shares his story like never before. Enjoy Jim Chapman taking us into the room where it happened.

0:57Jim I want to start by going to a moment where you couldn't actually believe that Jim Chapman, And this lad from Norfolk was becoming famous. When's the first time that you thought, what is happening to my life? Yeah, it's funny. I've never really thought of it as fame, for one thing. At the time, there was no one else doing it. I always say we were the best of a bad bunch. The stuff wasn't polished. It wasn't like sexy. It wasn't. What year did this begin? It started in 2010. I reckon 2012, 2013. But even then, we're talking small numbers by today's standards. Right. So it was sensational then.

1:33because it had never been done before. What sort of numbers? What would be your monthly YouTube audience? Oh, God. That's a really good question. I wouldn't want to hazard a guess because I'd tell you wrong, but I'm not talking like multi-multi-millions. It took me quite a while to reach a million subscribers on YouTube. And so it was one of those things that sort of snowballed. As it gets bigger, it grows and it grows and it picks up more snow on the way, but it wasn't like you can kind of see nowadays. So I think a lot of people have this misconception that it just suddenly we woke up one day and we're the OGs.

2:03You know, it was a slightly slower process. However, once it gained traction, word of mouth, the nature of the algorithm, the nature of sharing things on social media just kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger. And so I think that part of my success, not because I'm brilliant at social media by any means. In fact, if I were to start today, I wouldn't cut through at all. But I think it was right place and right time. An audience of people were ready to commit. But also I think I was the right guy who could communicate well and who saw it as an opportunity and dived on it. Because this has changed my life.

2:41This is not the trajectory I was on. This is not where I was going to go. And I recognized that. And I was like, OK, well, I'm going to make the most of this and I'm going to say yes to things and I'm going to live adventure because I'm never going to get this chance again. And that was 15 years ago. And I think it was a time where it was just for fun. you know um i think now it's everything's monetized and it's very much a job and it's much more competitive and there's also i think just by numbers there is a really ugly side to it and you know there's still loads of positive don't get me wrong um but it's a very different atmosphere now and did you feel back then like because you know you said you were lucky but there must have been a point where you actually you and the rest of the sort of gang of young people that you hooked up with you must have felt like you were good because every time you did something it seemed to be a success like i would watch a video and i never saw one that didn't have incredible numbers yeah i i know you have to park your modesty for one moment but i'm just because i do think that life can sometimes make us feel like we're this we're the secret to the success and it's okay to say that sometimes in hindsight you're you're right and i think if you were to ask one of the others of the group you probably would be spot on i think for me because I was always the smallest of the group.

3:59Whether they paid much mind to it or not, I certainly knew it. Like my views were always a little bit under theirs. And my subscriber count was always a little bit like I was the last one to reach a million subscribers. And so I always felt a bit like the runt. And so even though I was part of this amazing group, I was sort of the bottom of the amazing group. So I always felt like I had to do more and try harder. And I always felt like, for example, if I asked one of the others to film a video with me, I was always really uncomfortable because I'd be like, oh, they're doing me a favor now we are friends like i i adore those people still um and and um so we now have kids who like um otterly is only one week older than margot for example you know like we we have all these connections still and i adore them now as an adult i feel less silly about it but back then i was really concerned that they might think that i was just trying to use them for the traffic and so yes i think you're totally right and i know there have been instances with the others i remember who it was but one of them had said something so ridiculous one time oh yeah i'll just tweet once and we'll sell out all these tickets and i was like that's wank and also not true and don't like overestimate what you can do he tweeted once didn't sell out all the tickets so then we had to actually graft to make it a thing and i think because i've always been that sort of lower end of the top tier um it has it's given like a lit of fire under me to make sure I don't stop you know I also think it's the nature of who I am and you know my upbringing and everything I I am concerned that if ever I don't do it then it's all gone explain what you mean by that what part of your upbringing makes you feel like that it's funny because actually because my dad I think it's really easy to blame my father for everything because he was abusive and everything but actually although that is very true and and he definitely had uh has left marks and my childhood was unhappy.

5:55I think my mum never got to take her foot off the gas because she was looking after four of us. I'm a twin and I've got two older siblings. So our needs were so drastically different. Me and John, perhaps easier because we were almost like one being, you know, whatever he needed, I needed at the same time because we grew at the same rate and everything. But Sam's 10 years older than me. Nick is seven years older than me. So what Sam needed, what Nick needed is very different to what me and John needed, right? my mum was jumping through hoops she never got time off like she has the most amazing work ethic to the point of martyrdom and now I'm like mum you're 67 slow down and that's me um and it took me a long time to realize that that's me um and so I have definitely inherited that from her it's an incredible work ethic and when it's turned up to like eight or nine you can just work hard and um bash bash things out and like just keep going when it's turned up to a 10 or 11 shit like anxiety depression stress like just lethargy and were those part of your everyday life in your youtube heyday because if i'd have tuned into a video back then i certainly wouldn't have said that anxiety lethargy stress and depression yeah were part of your everyday yeah i know i I mean, but that's not great content, is it?

7:12And also, no, it's not great content. The world has come a really long way in 15 years. I wasn't even aware of how bad I was. My mum was really concerned for me, and rightly so, actually. I look back at it, and I was suicidal. Less so as this started to take off because I threw myself into it, but just prior. When you were still in Norwich? Still in Norwich, yeah. I was working full time to pay for my master's. I was doing part time. And I just went through the motions. Like I was really, really miserable to the point where had I not made change pretty quickly, which luckily came, I probably might have done something stupid, you know.

7:55And that doesn't just go. It takes work. It takes therapy. It takes a whole load of mind state shifting and it takes a lot of energy. And suddenly you're thrown into being a massive part of this huge movement, which is now, you know, I still pride myself on being one of the guys that was at the very beginning of what has become a behemoth industry. You know, like I was there for that. That's incredible. But I look back at it and I don't remember feeling cool. I don't remember feeling like I was successful. I remember thinking, shit, I haven't got long. Could you take us to the room where you first realized that the numbers that you were generating, the numbers that you lived by, your ratings were not what they were.

8:40They'd started to drop. I can't think of like a single instance because it always, I used to send my management emails. Every time I'd go, if I went away on holiday, for example, and I was like, I'm going to have a bit of time off. They knew by day three, I'd be spinning. and I'd send them a really long email about my exit plan. I can't keep doing this forever. It's all going to go tits up. Here's what I want us all to work on so that I can make sure I've got something at the end of all this. And that's the early days. And what do they tend to be, those exit plans? I don't know. I'd ask them for help.

9:09Right. But what can I do? And that goes day three, isn't it, Jim? Because they'd know by that point, because if I don't work, I get kind of out of control. And they'd be like, you need... And did the others around you, you know, Alfie and Tanya and all, Did they think it would last forever? I think, I wasn't in their head, so I can't talk for them, but I think so. And they were right. They're still doing it. It's still going. I'm still doing it. I was wrong. I remember just thinking they were eternally confident. And I was thinking, you guys are stupid, because this is not going to be it for much longer, let alone forever.

9:48And then you became a father. and there was a moment where you obviously had to put your energy into being a new dad and a husband and everything else i'm really interested in how that played with you mentally because you know the most important thing is to be a dad yeah but every minute you spend being a dad it's a minute that your audience is collapsing yeah online and this is the hidden cost that is never discussed yeah would you share that period with us it was rough simultaneously magic and rough because I... But even that is hard to deal with mentally because you're like, why am I feeling, why am I so bothered about my social media account while I've got a newborn baby?

10:26Do you know what's funny? Overnight when Margot, my first was born, I suddenly was like, shit, I need loads of money. And I'd never been driven by money before. I've always been driven. It's all been really fortunate because I didn't come from any money. So like it's always been a byproduct of the stuff that I love doing. I've done things I enjoy and then I've been paid to do it down the line. and then suddenly margot was born i was like i don't have enough i need to make sure that she's looked after and then when jesse was born i was like i certainly don't have enough now i need to make sure that these kids never have a childhood that i had and you know then they i i when i kick the bucket they've got enough to get on with but by giving myself sort of paternity leave which is i thought what i needed to do i took my foot off the gas and i figured because i'm jim chaplin and because everyone knows who i am in my industry and i you know and and i say it's all humility in my world I'm a big deal and I thought that I would just be able to pop back into work and things would be fine but it really wasn't the case like in the couple of years I mean I had about 18 so there's 22 months between Margot and Jesse and so Margot was born um by the time I sort of ready to start coming back to work Sarah was really heavily pregnant again and so I didn't stayed with Jesse and when Jesse was born he was sick he had um like a reflux thing so he was it It was not fun for about six months.

11:43So I had about two, two and a half years where I didn't do much. This is also at the same time where we just bought and renovated a house. So I spent loads of money on that. And I was suddenly like watching my bank account and my interaction go, and I was like, shit, I'm supposed to now. I remember saying to Sarah, I've never had more skin in the game and less to give. You know, I've been successful for a big chunk of my career and I was earning enough to make it all work. and then suddenly I've got children and I've thought I was doing the right thing about buying and making their home for them but I've spent everything I've got and there's nothing else coming in because I'm no longer as relevant as I used to be and it was really hard for me to get my head around and I really thought well my time has come I am now that has been I've been stressing about being for all this time it's happened and it's happened at the worst time ever what did that do for your mentor uh it was up and down yeah it was it was it's weird because you see your kid do things for the first time ever and you're like oh my god i've never loved anything more and it's euphoria and then you go and think i need to buy nappies and i don't know if i can afford to to do it right now you know and like bad yeah there were times it was that bad yeah i i had to borrow some money off my mum and like i haven't had to do that for for a very long time like it got really quite quite tight actually um and then i again i think this is testament to to me being a hard worker but good to work with i made a few phone calls to people who i've worked with in the past and was like listen i need some advice i don't i wasn't asking for freebies i wasn't asking for like handouts or anything i just was like i i trust you i respect you i need some advice i don't know what to do i've i've got myself in this pickle and it's not as simple as just switching back on again and making content because you need to now cut through so much noise and so um a lot of people who who i have so much time for were like okay right well let's work out a strategy and they kind of helped me sort of put me back on the straight and narrow took new management on board um made some some changes i cared much more this time around whereas before it's not i didn't care because i you know i have so much care for my career but i was before the kids were born i was going through the motions i was just churning out content because i knew it was paying me but I wasn't like loving it anymore and then suddenly I was like right I need to give more of a shit about it I can't just do it anymore like I need to I need to up my output and I'm still feeling it now there are still times where because of the nature of how invoices work and everything there are still times like oh actually I really need that to get paid soon um but now I'm back out the other end of it for the most part it's I love what I do again um I love watching my kids grow and I don't feel the same terror that I felt before it was always marred with a shit like what if I can't what if I have to move back home and sell everything I've earned and and give them a life that is not this one and it feels really really good to to be busy doing stuff I love to see my kids thrive knowing that I can support them again um but it was rough really was it was worst time my career for a by by uh stretch so what does the world look like then for young people who want to get into this content creator industry right as in i mean does first of all does it come recommended by jim chapman yes if you have the right mindset 100 and what's the right mindset you need to drop the ego the amount of people i see who are um young youngish you know who do this for a job who are only too desperate to tell you how busy and important they are blows my mind i remember so many examples i remember being on a helicopter in manhattan um on this press trip with the brand and i and a few others were given special treatment because there was only so much space on the helicopters people with the biggest influence right um and this guy was sat next to me and he was pissy because he couldn't get a photo out of window because he was sat in the middle and i was like oh i'll move with you it's fine and the pilot came over he was oh no you can't move because you'll uh you know you'll unsettle the helicopter i said oh okay right that's that out then and he got in a strop about it and i was like just watch the ego you're you've been selected out of a bunch of like 50 people as one of the three that gets to go on the helicopter ride where's your head at to to behave that way to speak to the to the organizers that way right i i have this thing that if i walk into a room and there's like an influencer event there is a sense of huge but very fragile egos like people are so and this is where what i was saying a minute about my contentment i don't feel that way i don't give a shit and maybe that's easy for me to say from my ivory tower because i'm jim chapman and because most people know who i am and whatever but i don't have to tell people how many followers i have if they don't know me and they ask or they'll see me on you know what i mean i i always think that if people are really desperate to tell me how busy and important they are, I'm like, if I follow you, I'll see it and I'll support you because the internet is infinitely big.

16:47And if you're my friend and I like you, I will absolutely leave a comment and a like, and I'll do what I can to help. So you trying to convince me of your importance is of no consequence to me. You know what I mean? And so I think if you are going to start doing it now, you need to keep your ego in check. You need to make sure that there is more to you than just what you do, right? You can do this for a living or you can do it for pleasure that's great but if it becomes who you are not what you do that's a big problem and i also think that you have to do it for the creativity and for the love not for the potential because the potential is massive but to so few um and so for everyone that and there's also no ram or reason for everyone that succeeds there's someone out there making very, very similar content who hasn't hit the algorithm right for whatever reason.

17:40And so you cannot just assume you're going to be successful. So I think that if you have the right attitude, it can be the best job in the world. But if you go in expecting to become important and famous and all these things, then you're in the wrong job and it will bite you on the ass. What do you see the impact of AI on your industry being? uh that's a good question i i think i can do our job better than we can even though and this this is what's mind-blowing is is that our job is to communicate there are channels out there now that are just ai you know like even the video it generates are ai the whole thing it takes the social out of social media for me you know the point that and the reason i'm successful is because my audience connected with me and if you are then removing me from it they're connecting with nothing right and that that to me just feels disingenuous wrong it feels unsafe in some way like yeah it's like haven't we already lost the social from social media though because when it first started it was the people that you liked and you followed yeah and you saw your followers now if you go on to x and just go through right i would be amazed if you find regular content only from the people that you follow.

18:51Yeah, that's a valid point. Because it's now just algorithmically driven. What is interesting is... It's so different. Yeah, and there's a reason they all operate the same. There's a reason they all have that sort of swipe mechanism is because it's addictive to your brain. We all know, there is now empirical research, that it makes people less happy. It doesn't do your brain any good to be doing that. But it makes people money and it keeps you on the app. And so that's the way they work. And then you throw in AI on top of that and the whole thing kind of to me feels like a it's like the matrix not to get like too like post-apocalyptic but it is it's it's scary and i do think there needs to be checks and balances and i think there needs needs to be rules i do think that ai is here to stay and it it can if used appropriately streamline a work uh flow it can it can do things that we can't do you know much much quicker isn't there a day though where jim chapman can be creating fresh content every day possibly yeah and he never needs to do a day's work yeah because ai yeah creates the i don't want to be in that world and i do something i would personally never do but there are platforms that already do it yeah yeah uh well if you want the views only then maybe that's the answer if you want the yeah the satisfaction of creating content it's a totally different question it's like it's an art form isn't it if you don't want to do the art of the art if you just want to sell the piece you know it's a different thing and i i think that like i say it's already happened it's already happening all the time um and ai doesn't need to get paid does it if you if you own the account and set it all up cleverly and you know how to use it effectively you can make loads of money just from doing a few prompts right what do you think the secret is to being a good communicator i think you have to listen more than you speak sometimes um which is something that a lot of influencers are guilty of um i think you have to be aware of who you're talking to and that means sometimes being a chameleon one of the things that really bothers me is when people say just just be yourself like which one right we all have different selves in different rooms i'm a very different me right now in this room than i am with my wife and kids or when i'm going to this event i'm going to later do you know what i mean and that's fine that's normal that's healthy um and i think it's being aware of using that sort of I guess chameleonism to act appropriately in the right the right circumstance but ultimately I think it's thinking before you speak and listening to what people are saying so you know you know how to guide the conversation and also to being empathetic which is a skill that not loads of people have especially again in our industry and you'll know this from TV just in the media in general people are very desperate to say their thing as opposed to say the appropriate thing or to input to a conversation i'm amazed how many people think they can either be a presenter or be a communicator or whatever and they won't ask me a single question about myself yeah tell me all about themselves yeah and they're like yeah i want to be a presenter because and i'm like wow the most important thing in life is to be interested in other people yeah if you are not interested in other people and their journey their story their lessons right their learnings i mean this might sound a bit ironic but um a lot of the way i see myself when i present is is i am the especially because my job is about me right and and it's my life but i'm almost like the conduit for somebody else's thing if i'm presenting like if i'm on stage doing a thing and i'm hosting it's not about me i am just trying to get them to communicate their stuff and i happen to be the middle man um and i think that with that comes as a real sort of humility you need to know your place in the conversation um a lot of people don't have that i have the same thing people say i want to be an influencer i want to be a presenter and then go off and tell me all the things and like well you you need to maybe take some advice and listen as opposed to just tell me why you should do it.

22:52When you look at the way modern marketing operates, what do you see as best in class for people working with influencers, with YouTubers, with social media accounts? I think very often a brand will get in touch and they'll just have a brief and you have to meet these key messages. And they'll say, right, we need the content to be 45 seconds long. You've got to say these things in the first three. Well, one, that's not easy to do. And automatically in the first three seconds, I've lost my audience because it's an ad. I've been fortunate that I've worked with some of the best around. I worked with Sky for a long time and they were fantastic in that they gave us the thing to talk about.

23:30I'm like, what would you make? And then they let me go off and do it. M &S, I work with at the moment. They are, by some stretch, the best I've ever worked with. Why? I know the team really well now. We go for drinks, which is really important because at the end of the day, whether you are you know top of your game you're you're brad pitt or you're the coffee runner or whatever people work with people right and so they put the time and effort in um but also they just go the brief i had one the other day short shorts what would you do and they let me go off and like i go find my shorts and i make the content around the short shorts and it's entirely up to me how i do it what i do uh they're up for taking risks you know and because of that i then do much more than I'm contractually obliged to do, which is great for everybody involved, right?

24:14Because I can really commit. They get extra from me. And truly, I've got a lot of their telephone numbers now. We text and we get along really well. And that's really, really important. But then you get the opposite where a brand just go, here's a really heavy brief. Here's all the bits and bobs you have to say. I know for a fact it won't perform very well. And I often will say, I'll do it, but it won't work and then they go why didn't it work what the things that won't work look like if it's really prescribed you know um if it's like i say if it's you've got these three messages you've got to get them in within this time frame the product needs to be in shot immediately um that's i also have like a style of content like i do a few things but one of which is sort of like here's what i go up to during the day if i can fit things into that and it works organically and it's natural, wonderful.

25:04But if they're asking me just to talk to camera and go, eh, and like do a sales pitch, clearly my audience are going to go, this stands out like a sore thumb. I get it at the moment because it's like, it's a huge lucrative business and a lot of brands want a piece of that pie. And I think quite often it's about stack them high, sell them cheap. They'll just hire a, but like it used to be, I would get like a big campaign and I would be the person. I remember working with Hugo Boss one year and they hired me for about eight jobs in that one year and they'd never really worked on social media before so I was their guy and it worked really, really well.

25:39The following year they were like, right, great, so that works. Let's use the budget we had and spread it across loads. And so I guess the message was sent further but the content didn't have so much of a narrative or a voice. You know, I always think as well that what brands don't see is when people like us work with a brand, you do have to get used to the fact that you are important to them and they're important to you for the time that you're working together and then they disappear. And it's a weird thing, isn't it? Sometimes years later you think, oh, I used to work with them. I remember they were nice people.

26:13It's a transient life and you can't get emotionally invested. Yeah, no, no, no, you absolutely can't. No, totally agree. And how different does the industry itself look compared to when you started? I don't recognize it, actually. It's nuts. And also I've seen a changing of the guard. like when i first started we were knocking on doors and people going no idea who you are thanks goodbye then we started getting loads of work through uh and we started like earning good money and like it was it was massive and then pr sort of move internally right so one made this brand i've worked with them then i moved to this brand i've worked with them i'm at the point now where those people are either the top of the business or they've left entirely and now there's all these new young people who post date me you know what i mean they're like i don't remember watching you because i was too young to watch you the first time around and so i've i now i'm at a point where i'm too old to to like work with with someone like the new up and comers and so it's the whole it's worth now so much money into the economy like there are so many people who are making millions of pounds from social media by monetizing these things it's wild bearing in mind i think i did one of the first jobs there ever was on social media where um it was with vo5 extreme style and i had to wash my hair in extreme ways i got paid hardly anything for it i got sprayed in the face by a fire hose i had to dunk my head in the river thames while on a speedboat got pink eye immediately to wash my hair at the top of ben nevers with snow as a bungee jump and like dunk my head in all for a couple of quid yeah whereas now it's it's just it's a massive industry and i have a lot of pride that i was part of that but also it's um it's so different now it's so different do you think we'll see you back on youtube yeah okay again i think with me moving house i think it lends itself to longer form content because the house is a mess and these loads of renovating but i think why i don't want to just go on it because like if i've got a purpose and a reason and if i've got content that i think will suit the platform better then i'll go to the platform but also your life is enough without needing to be shown to everyone precisely and also my life's boring it used to i used to do stuff for the content yeah when i was younger like i was like what can i do today to film whereas now i'm like well i'm doing the nursery run then i'm sat in my office writing drawing i'll go to the gym i'll make a protein shake it's not sexy content you know what i mean so i only want to post stuff one that's worthy of posting um and two because of one i'm not because i'm desperate to get traffic so there's no part of you now looking at the the guys that you work with who are still on youtube or the people who are on instagram and are absolutely killing it with a sense of envy no not envy i mean i i would love to still pull in loads and loads you know massive figures and listen don't get me wrong i do fine uh my stats are fairly healthy um according to my management but i'm quite good at supporting people's success you know if i see someone else do well i've learned quite early on that comparison is the thief of joy especially on social media so if i see someone i know and i like doing well okay good for you i then tend to mute them because i don't need to see it because actually the last thing i want to do is find myself in a position where i resent them or i'm envious and so i have a load of people that i just don't see anymore because it's not healthy for me to be exposed to what sort of people a lot of people look just like me basically who would feel the same niche as me because when I first started especially doing the fashion stuff I was I think the only guy on planet earth doing it I mean I might be exaggerating but as far as I'm aware I was and now it's a huge niche massive and people are younger better looking you know look cooler in their clothes etc etc and I don't need to see other people kick ass in the niche that I sort of accidentally invented yeah and do it much better than I ever could so I just don't watch it And I'll tell you the way to deal with that, which has worked for me, is you would like what they've got in terms of their followers, their impact.

30:14But if you're going to have that, you have to have their whole life. So you have to have their house, their car, their kids, their parents. Yeah. Do you want to give up your kids and your wife and your life for that? There was also an element of, and I learned this quite early on, but it was only about three weeks ago that someone said it to me. There's an element of how it looks versus how it feels. And how it feels to me most of the time is that I'm treading water and I'm waiting for it all to go tits up. Walked in this room today and your whole team, oh my God, we're so excited to have you on.

30:43We think you're brilliant. And like, I don't feel that, but they do. You know, I mean, I guess they say that to everybody. Absolutely not. It's the first time I've ever heard them say that. But my management said to me the other day, they were like, I know you stress about it, but from the outside looking in, you've just had press here. You've just been to this thing. You are the face of that. What do you stress about then? I just, because I only see the stuff that I do. You know what I mean? I just, I, I am it. My job is me. I know that there's an element I could say before that it's really important to not become what you do, but I, my job is me.

31:19Right. And so as much as I, I have work gym and life gym, I I'm aware that if things fail, I'm fucked. Everyone else is like my management, my team, I find I look after more than just me, but I'm yeah what happens to me so it's really important for me to have other people sort of tell me it's going okay because I never I never believe it and so the other day I was in a meeting and they were like you have to realize that how it looks is not how it feels to you you're doing really really well the things that you're doing a high end there is great reach it's it's good eyes on like you look brilliant even if you feel shit it's I think it's odd because obviously I so much content and it i mentioned i like doing the stuff making the thing and making daily content is not the thing do you know what i mean it's an endless onwards sort of hamster wheel and that's part of my issue with with what i do it's it's when do you get off how do you get off when you plug in brands and that's how you earn your money at what point do you jump off the wheel because then suddenly you stop earning and so i've never really sort of been able to zoom out enough and find what the bigger picture is in with regards to just content like at what point have i completed the project or the the productivity or the creation uh and actually for me i i do it with a lot of other things at the moment i'm writing and drawing a lot and i'm putting those two skills together and administrating a book um i do other sort of micro like projects if i'm working writing an article once i finish that article it's done yeah once i've done the shoot with the article it's done that's sort of a job ticked thing with social media is that you never get to tick the box you never get to stop the thing because as soon as you do that's it over what i would love to do as well as on my way out is not i think a lot of people especially on social media have the the need to over explain so if they've been away for a while you know for whatever reason i've had a break or they've been unwell they come back i'm sorry i've been off everyone i've been doing this like anyone gives a shit every time i see that i think i don't freaking care Yeah.

33:24If your content's not here, there is lots of other content I can look at. I won't even notice. If I got hit by a bus on the way out of this and suddenly there was no more Jim Chapman content, no one's going to go, where's Jim gone? You know, they'll just watch somebody else, right? In the nicest possible way, you're totally right. Yeah. But what a brilliant way to think. And I think there's two ways of viewing that. You either go, it's pointless and nothing matters, or you go, it's pointless and nothing matters. So why not, right? and so I think for me when my time is done on the internet I'm not going to make a big farewell video I'm not going to do a big song and dance about it like no one's going to care I'll just sneak away and do whatever comes next I have no desire to be important and famous really it's kind of a byproduct of what I like to do I would actually quite enjoy being sort of anonymous and successful I think the reason why you're still doing it is because you feel like that if you thought everything's rosy then you probably won't be doing it possibly and i also think that my audience have you know one piece of feedback i get a lot is that they like me because i'm like real um which is a terrible word to use on social media because everything's organic or real or whatever but i think they're like i truly know who you are i get stopped on the street before they actually realize they don't know who i am we've never really met me you know what i mean because they they they have that connection because i've shared so much so yeah i i think it's um it's very much that.

34:47Brilliant. Thank you for your time. No, thank you. Good man. Pleasure.